U.S. triple jumper Salif Mane finds solace in familiar voice before Olympic debut

PARIS -- For the past three years, competition days have begun the same way for Salif Mane.

The American triple jumper grabs his phone, taps open his voicemail app, scrolls to a series of saved voice messages and presses play.

Then, he listens to the words of a man whose love and presence Mane continues to feel, despite no longer being able to touch him.

"Hey, Salif Mane. How are you? Are you good? How's everything?

"I'm praying for you. Good luck."

When Mane, 22, walks into the Stade de France on Wednesday evening to make his Olympics debut in the qualifying round of the men's triple jump, those words will be reverberating through his head.

"It's just a lot of motivation," Mane told ESPN, sniffling as he choked back tears. "It just helps me. It keeps me calm. It helps me remember what the end goal is, and what are you doing this for, and who are you doing this for?"

The who, in this case, is Thierno Mane, Salif's father.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Thierno, a longtime restaurant worker in Rockefeller Plaza in midtown New York, got sick. After a protracted bout, he died. He was 67.

Natives of Senegal, Thierno and his wife Fatou Seye immigrated to New York in the late 1990s. They settled in the Bronx, the borough where Seye continues to run a hair-braiding business.

"She's a phenomenal woman, very hard-working, and she's been very supportive," Salif said. "I mean, she's starting to learn about track and field and understand what I do exactly.

"Like, I'll just show her videos of triple jump and I'll be like, 'This is what I do.' And I would just tell her about how it works and the distance and how the Olympics and all that stuff works."

At the Olympic trials in Oregon a month ago, every part of Mane's triple-jump sequence worked better than it had at any point before in his young career.

After having already made the Olympic team with early jumps in the finals that were good enough to qualify, he unleashed a formidable personal-best of 17.52 meters on his final attempt. It vaulted him to a gold medal victory and allowed him to take the American standard distance to Paris.

Mane's jump was the sixth longest in the world this year. That's why the 2024 NCAA triple jump champion out of Fairleigh Dickinson suddenly became a potential medalist.

"I was just like, 'No, there's no way. This is crazy,'" Mane said, reflecting on seeing "17.52" flash on the screen. "Usually when you get out the sand, you don't really know the distance. But you know it's far."

When Mane reacted to his jump, he got lost in the euphoria of the moment.

First, he threw a fistful of sand back into the pit with the wrist-snap whip and velocity of a Nolan Ryan fastball.

Then came the sequence of yells: loud, emphatic, dynamic. Each time he shouted, he hopped and skipped in long, energetic strides back up the jump straightaway.

The exuberance ran in stark contrast to what so much of his life has been like the past four years.

Loss and grief have been unavoidable feelings.

"My dad, he was my biggest supporter," Mane said, his voice continuing to crack. "I remember the first time I was on the news, he was so happy."

Before the clip made it on television, Thierno told his son to be sure he grabbed his phone to record the moment he appeared on the screen. Thierno wanted to see Salif's televised debut, and he wanted his own copy of the video texted to him right away.

The next time Thierno was at work, he pulled out his phone and showed the clip to anyone he encountered.

"He played a big role during my high school years and my first year of college," Mane said. "I did the sport somewhat for him, because I just wanted to see him happy and show him that I really did it.

"I just wanted him to be here and see me succeed the way I am right now."

Mane was introduced to the triple jump when he was a freshman at Bronx High School for Medical Science. Like a lot of jumpers, he began track and field as a runner.

"Then I decided I didn't like running," Mane said. "I wasn't really fast enough for it."

Thus, a triple jumper was born. When he realized later that year that his initial form and fundamentals needed work, Mane went down a YouTube rabbit hole to learn how to properly execute the jump.

His educators? All Olympians.

Christian Taylor, the recently retired American gold medalist at the London and Rio Games; Will Claye, the American who took silver at both Olympics, finishing just behind Taylor; and Pedro Pichardo, the reigning Olympic gold medalist of Portugal, who won the event in Tokyo, were all athletes Mane watched.

At the U.S. trials, Mane outlasted two of them to earn a trip to Paris -- Claye and Taylor.

"It was nice to compete against them," Mane said. "They actually motivated me on my last jump. It meant a lot. The whole competition, everybody was motivating me even after I had won. So that's actually how I was able to pop out that real big one last."

The Cuban-born Pichardo is the world's No. 1-ranked triple jumper and is the gold medal favorite.

"These guys were basically like the blueprint to my career," Mane said. "I watched them, screen-recorded their jumps, took it to practice and all that stuff. To be able to see [Taylor and Claye] there, and watching me compete, it meant a lot."

As he prepares to make the biggest jumps of his life, performing in front of several extended relatives from Senegal who now call France home -- and a stadium packed with fans, Mane is comforted knowing there will be someone else watching, too. Even if Thierno Mane is not physically inside Stade de France, his presence will be felt, nonetheless.

To ensure it, Salif Mane will resume the routine he began in 2021 when he started jumping at Fairleigh Dickinson. He'll grab his phone, tap open his voicemail app, scroll to a series of saved voice messages and press play. Then, the words will wash over him.

"Hey, Salif Mane. How are you? Are you good? How's everything?

"I'm praying for you. Good luck."